Lovain is a 33 year old Swede who has lived in Belgium for the past 10 years. This blog contains general reflections on life in a foreign country, as well as an attempt to understand, or even accept the diversity and complexity of our geographical and social relations. Lovain is married to an American and has 2 children.

Friday, July 20, 2007

A sign of life

I'm not dead. I just haven't been able to blog over the past month. I've been working full time. The Husband has been working on his doctorate thesis. The boys have school off. Our friends had babies, and those babies got baptised. Other friends' children had birthday parties, and in general, we're trying to spend time with our friends, knowing we will miss them come September. Most of all though, we're moving. We're lived in Belgium for 11 years, and although we never really intended on staying, we've accumulated enough things that moving is quite a bit of work. A lot of work, actually. Not only do we have to choose a small amount of our things that we can bring (and try to get rid of the rest), we also have to pack those things very well and put them all down on an inventory list (including a list of all our DVDs by title), following a complicated system that classifies everything by durables/consumables and container. Add all the paperwork and general arranging moving entails (passport renewals, supplier notifications, address change notifications, etc.), vaccinations, sorting and one million other things that I can't think of unless I check my 4 feet long list of things to do, and you have a very busy life. Happy and excited, but busy. To top things off, I decided several months ago - BEFORE I realized what a lot of work this move was going to be - that now would be a good time to go visit family in Sweden for 2 weeks. So tomorrow we leave, the boys and I, on a 7 am flight to Copenhagen. When we get back, I have to go back to work for 2 weeks, and then we leave for Cairo.By a stressed - happy and excited, but stressed - and busy Lovain